


Before the Looking Glass

by Qophia



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Past Character Death, Witch Hunt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 08:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3167630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qophia/pseuds/Qophia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Hero of Ferelden confronts Morrigan about her betrayal on the eve of the Battle of Denerim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before the Looking Glass

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains major spoilers for _Dragon Age: Origins_ and the "Witch Hunt" DLC. While there are no character deaths in it, it does heavily involve and reference the prior death of a major character. Tagged relationships are referenced in the work and vital to the story but don't actively feature in it.
> 
> Reactions, constructive criticism (including typo corrections), compliments, and offers to buy me drinks are all welcome.
> 
> ==========
> 
> I finally got around to finishing the "Witch Hunt" DLC for _Dragon Age: Origins_ , and I felt the final exchange between the Warden and Morrigan was missing something, given their specific circumstances. The Warden was a Cousland who romanced Alistair. She supported him in the Landsmeet, and they planned to marry and rule jointly. But the Warden turned down Morrigan's offer at Redcliffe, so Alistair sacrificed himself to slay the archdemon. After Anora's coronation, the Warden chose to travel with Zevran.
> 
> The base dialogue is pulled directly from "Witch Hunt." Everything else is mine.

Warden-Commander Cousland, the Hero of Ferelden, was so very tired. The dragon cultists who had reclaimed the ruins in the Dragonbone Wastes had not bothered to clear the corpses out of the Nest, and it still stank of them. She advanced with daggers drawn, half-expecting to find the pit reclaimed by Darkspawn—that would certainly be typical of her luck. But as the Warden crested the rise where not so long ago she had felled the Mother, she saw only an iridescent mirror, and a figure standing before it. Even before her Mabari hound dashed up to greet the woman, the Warden knew it was Morrigan.

"I think she's... expecting you," Ariane said. "Ask her about our book," she reminded, but the Warden had already left her companions behind.

As the Warden approached her, Morrigan straightened from the hound and warned, "Not one step more, or I am gone."

"Hello to you, too, Morrigan."

"I assume you know what this is," Morrigan said, nodding towards the Eluvian behind her. "I have gone to great lengths to find and activate this portal. One false step, and I am through and beyond your reach for good."

The Warden snorted. "I found you once; I can do it again."

"You can try," Morrigan smirked. "Truth be told, I waited this long because I was curious. Tell me: why did you come?"

"I came for answers."

"Answers." Morrigan sighed. "We all want answers." She folded her arms. "I offered you a deal, and you threw it in my face. Why should I answer any of your questions now?"

The Warden's glance darted towards the Eluvian for a moment, and she narrowed her eyes. "If you didn't want to talk, you wouldn't have stayed."

Morrigan's mouth twitched. "Always the clever one. Ask your questions, then, since you have traveled so far."

"Why did you want the archdemon's soul?"

"Does it matter? You denied me, and survived even so. Well done." Morrigan's lips tightened, and she looked away from the Warden. "I imagine you believe my goal was a selfish one. Now you shall never know."

_"Ask your questions,"_ the Warden thought, _is apparently not the same as "and I will answer them."_ But she could not stop now. Not when she was so close. "What is your plan? I need to know."

"You think I would tell you now? After you denied me at Redcliffe?" Morrigan scoffed. "Think again. My plans are not half so villainous as you seem to think they are. Whether you believe me or not, it no longer matters."

"I denied you? I _denied_ you? Andraste's tits, Morrigan!" The Warden hurled her daggers to the ground in disgust, where they stuck, quivering. "You came to me the night before we were to face down a corrupted foreign god, not ten minutes after I'd learned that a Grey Warden's life was required to end the Blight. And you told me that you wanted to capture that Old God's soul. By using the man I loved—a man you had displayed nothing but contempt for—as a piece of meat. And that this... this _profanity_  had been your goal all along. Had been the reason you joined, and the reason you stayed. To make a child with the soul of a god for your own purposes. A child that neither the father nor I would never meet. And you wouldn't tell me _why_." Morrigan opened her mouth as if to speak, but the Warden pressed on.

"We were together for a year, Morrigan. A _year_. Fighting the same monsters, sleeping in the same dirt, warming at the same fires... pissing in the same bushes! And not once in all that time did you trust me with the slightest hint of your secret, or even the truth of my own possible end. Yet you're surprised that I reacted poorly to a last-minute ultimatum? That I had doubts about your intentions? That I rejected a plan concocted by your mother? Who you may remember as a woman you sent me to kill. Which I _did_ ," the Warden spat, "because I cared about you. Not about what I could get from you—about _you_." The Warden paused, her fingers brushing a burn scar that still felt barely healed. "And then, she turned into a dragon! So, yes, I was skeptical of your _evil dragon mother's secret plan_." She took a deep breath, her eyes on Morrigan's.

"Why did you betray me?" the Warden asked.

Morrigan looked away. "I did not betray you," she said. "I left, just as I said I would."

"You abandoned me before the battle!"

"You abandoned _me_ before the battle!" Morrigan snapped, quick as the lightning that could jump from her fingers. "What I did was not done lightly! I needed you, and in return I thought I could help you! But you refused me, and that was the end of it. So do not speak to me of betrayal."

The Warden glanced down to her daggers, and clenched her fists. The weathered leather of her gauntlets creaked. "I needed _you_ , Morrigan. One more person, Morrigan. Even you. Especially you. The one I leaned on more than anyone besides my fellow Grey Warden, the one who had been with us since the aftermath of Ostagar. One more person could have made all the difference," she hissed, "but you ' _left_.'" The Warden's mouth twisted down, and her jaw clenched. "Riordan fell before he could strike the final blow." Three short, hard breaths, and then she threw the words at the woman who had been her friend, like a knife: "And it cost me Alistair."

Morrigan's arms dropped to her sides, some of the righteousness leaving her face. "I had heard rumors Anora was crowned, but I had hoped—" Her lips tightened. "I am sorry."

The Warden waved a hand and looked away as she found her voice. "I probably could have held out on my claim, but I wanted nothing so much as I wanted to get out of that city." Her eyes found Morrigan's again. "It was supposed to be me, you know, at the end. It _should_ have been me." She breathed in, then out, heavily. "I shouldn't have given him so much experience at knocking people off their feet with that shield," she said, her voice nearly breaking by the last word. Even now, a year gone, her throat tightened to say the words. Morrigan stepped closer, but did not speak.

"I think about it a lot," the Warden said, when she could. "How to fix it. How it could have gone differently. If... Alistair hadn't been so stubborn about recruiting Loghain. If I had insisted that Riordan take the time to put even one more person through the Joining. If your ritual would have worked."

"It would have," Morrigan said, not unkindly. The Warden had brought her left fist up to her chest as she'd spoken, and a tattoo of twisted vines showed on her arm, extending up under her sleeve and down into her gauntlet. Morrigan stepped forward again, closing more of the distance between them, her hand rising towards the Warden's arm. She asked, "Is that whole thing thorns?"

A smile knifed the Warden's mouth. "Not all of it." She pulled off the gauntlet, turning over her hand to display the palm. "A rose blooms here," she said, then thumped the fist to her chest, over her heart, "and here. I've been traveling with Zevran, and he's nimble with a needle."

"Nimble in all sorts of ways, if I remember Zevran."

A real smile, this time, with a snort that might have been a laugh. "He doesn't ask anything more than I can give. And," she said, unconsciously rubbing the spot where she had pointed to a tattoo of a rose, "it helps that he knows something about loss, and regret." The smile dropped. "And other people paying the price for what we... rashly decide when we feel we have been betrayed."

Morrigan grimaced. "Perhaps... If I had more fully considered..." They stood a moment in silence, then she continued. "Well. 'Tis done. And however we may wag our jaws, 'twill not grant either of us what we wanted. So allow me to provide you a warning. 'Tis Flemeth you should beware of, not me. Hunt her, if you hunt anyone."

The Warden gaped. "Your mother lives? How?"

"My mother has tricked her way past death and more. She is no more finished than I am. I thought I knew what Flemeth planned. I thought what she craved was immortality. And yet I was wrong. So very wrong." Morrigan's eyes were wide, but with fear or awe the Warden could not tell. Perhaps both. "She is no blood mage, no abomination... She is not even truly human."

"I should say not," the bemused Warden murmured.

"You denied me the ritual," Morrigan continued, "but it does not change what is to come. Change is coming to the world."

"Why? What is going to happen?"

"Many fear change and will fight it with every fiber of their being. But sometimes change is what they need most. Sometimes, change is what sets them free."

"And is that what you want?" the Warden asked. "To be free?"

"What I want is... unimportant now." Morrigan glanced back at the Eluvian, as if reacting to a sound the Warden could not hear. "I cannot tarry longer. The time has come for me to go."

The Warden hesitated, then spoke. "You don't have to do this alone, Morrigan."

Morrigan smiled wistfully. "I wish it were not so, but I do. There is one last thing I must tell you, if you will allow me. I left you a gift," she said, pointing back down the path. "The Dalish book is there, and something you will find of great interest. Goodbye, my friend." For a moment, it seemed almost as if Morrigan might close that last step to embrace the Warden, but that moment passed. Morrigan turned, walking back towards the Eluvian. She stroked it gently, and passed through it, and was gone.

The eyes of Warden-Commander Cousland were on the Eluvian as the surface of the mirror solidified, but she could not have been said to have been watching it. A few breaths passed as she stood alone, then she sighed as she bent to pick up her daggers. Wiping them clean, she turned to find out, at last, what Morrigan had left her.


End file.
